He grew up in Saalbach-Hinterglemm. His great-grandmother was one of the first in the region to start welcoming guests. His parents built a hotel with 100 beds in the Wiesern district. In 2012, the Wiesergut opened there in a new form. Together with his wife, Martina Kröll, he developed a visionary hotel concept: 17 suites in the Gutshof and seven exclusive suites facing the garden form a unit around a spacious courtyard together with the Badhaus. The result is a place that Sepp Kröll describes as a destination. A hotel that is not an alien designer UFO that has landed here by chance - no, on the contrary: it is a contemporary development of the existing, of old values. The details are right. The fabrics are traditional farm linen, virtually all the furniture and lamps are custom-made. The sourdough bread, butter and cream cheese are made fresh every day by Sepp Kröll's mother. Today, it is therefore almost impossible to compare the Wiesergut. One immediately believes when the hotelier's son says: "We have the courage to have our own style. We know what we like." However, this did not make implementation any easier: "It was difficult to find the right people to implement our vision." Far too often, architects and designers came on the scene with ready-made ideas.

Owner, Wiesergut Saalbach-Hinterglemm

My drive has always been: to be happy, we need to attract people who are a joy to interact with, who think and live similarly to us.

Today, guests come to the hotel who see it similarly to the host, who understand luxury not as gold and caviar, but as time and nature. People who, just like him, the farmer, appreciate the real, even simplicity. It is about seeing and experiencing. Sepp Kröll breeds the local Pinzgauer cows right next to the hotel and in summer on the Wieseralm. It goes without saying that the milk and meat from these beautiful animals are also part of the Wiesergut.

Sepp Kröll is critical. Critical of fashionable phenomena and other fast-moving dullness. He is critical of himself and is far from finished with the Wiesergut project: next year, the energy issue is to be solved with his own hydroelectric power plant. Sepp Kröll is a man for courageous and independent ideas.

Picture credits: Hari Pulko, Mario Webhofer, Sepp Kröll